Author Topic: Categorizing your images on your hard drive (Read 3766 times)

Phadrea · « **on:** January 10, 2012, 17:44 »

I have got myself into a bit of a mess on my hard drive with my categories as some files fit into a few genres.

Has anyone got a simple list which works and makes it easy to find them fast they would like to share so I can rename my folders and get them organised better ? I only use Raw Shooter to edit so I don't have automatic file naming software or anything. I also have the Raw and the JPEG versions of each file which makes it more complex. Of course my Raw files are numbered by the camera as I haven't got round to naming them. I don't want another of the same name to over wright it. Some have already disappeared mysteriously due to this I think.

TheDman · « **Reply #1 on:** January 10, 2012, 17:46 »

Mine are in folders broken down by year, month, and day. Finished files ready to upload go into a collective "stock" folder. Seems to work for me so far.

RacePhoto · « **Reply #2 on:** January 10, 2012, 23:31 »

Quote from: Herg on January 10, 2012, 17:44

I have got myself into a bit of a mess on my hard drive with my categories as some files fit into a few genres.

Has anyone got a simple list which works and makes it easy to find them fast they would like to share so I can rename my folders and get them organised better ?

NO

Sorry buy I do the Year, Month, date thing and then within that I also have events and trips in their own folders. If I did a shoot of Pumpkins, it would end up in Oct. under Pumpkin Shoot. I don't use the tags or all the nice functional categories that some of the software features. I just did a backup to external drive and then ran Picasa on it. Kind of interesting seeing how many dupes I have under different projects or first versions, then edited versions and TIFs (which I often use for making final upload versions) So much for organized. I spent half a day just removing Dupes with Dupe Finder...

I also have folders for uploaded stock images. Folders for what's sent to each Website or magazine. So there will be dupes in those, as I save the original in the original shoot date/folder. But I don't want to send them the same photo twice?

louoates · « **Reply #3 on:** January 11, 2012, 00:12 »

I've come to the conclusion that I can never organize my hundreds of thousands of digital images any better. I know they are there, lurking somewhere in four different 4 Terabyte external drives as well as in three internal hard drives. I have a few dozen folders that hold all my current best selling images. And I do name each image descriptively such as "Superstition Mountain 64x16 OptShrpMat". So with a Mac Spotlight search I can type part of a file's name and find most stuff fairly quickly. And don't get me started on DUPLICATES!!!

qwerty · « **Reply #4 on:** January 11, 2012, 02:54 »

Is there a program that can identify exact duplicates and delete them ?

BaldricksTrousers · « **Reply #5 on:** January 11, 2012, 02:58 »

I thought I was the only one mired in digital chaos. I'm glad I'm not.

For the last couple of years I've just filed day by day and then added a description of what the shoot was to the end of the date. If there were two shoots in a day I try to make two folders.

rubyroo · « **Reply #6 on:** January 11, 2012, 03:13 »

I just keep it really simple:

1. A folder for the RAWs directly transferred from my camera card (each folder is automatically dated by the transfer software). I import from that folder into Lightroom.

2. A 'work-in-progress' folder that I transfer .psd formats to after initial processing in Lightroom. This is the folder I turn to regularly to see which images I want to add final touches to in Photoshop before uploading.

3. An 'Images for FTP' folder that I transfer final .jpgs to, and upload images from.

4. An 'uploaded jpgs' folder to drag those .jpgs to, after they've been uploaded, leaving 'Images for FTP' empty for the next batch.

Unless there was a huge amount of post-processing/compositing involved, I usually delete the .psd files and back up RAWs and final jpgs to an external hard drive. If the .psd involved hours of work, I'll back that up too.